Supreme Bloodline Evolution System

Chapter 173: Agnia’s Resolve

It was as if reality itself had shattered around Max.

His whole body felt naked, despite the scales still covering him. The void armor was gone. His blade was gone. All that remained was his flesh, his wings, his blood, and those dark scales slowly cracking beneath the invisible pressure of the golden circle rising around him.

The cracks spread little by little, thin golden lines burning between them as if the light was not only pressing against his body, but reaching deeper, trying to peel away everything that did not belong to this world.

It is too late now...

A sigh rang through his mind.

It was sad and ancient, so lonely that for a moment it did not sound like the voice of a creator at all. It sounded like someone who had watched the same disaster happen too many times before, someone who had already stretched his hand toward Max but could no longer reach him.

I told you to flee, Max. Once you are in their hands, I can no longer help you.

Max clenched his teeth until his jaw ached.

His whole body screamed in pain. It felt as if walls were closing in on him from every direction at once, pressing against his bones, crushing his lungs, forcing the air out of his chest one slow breath at a time. Even his wings trembled behind him, heavy and useless, dragged down by the golden light as if the circle had turned the air itself into chains.

But the pain was not the worst part.

The worst part was hearing those words.

The system creator had never sounded this defeated before.

That voice had always been strange, distant, sometimes cold, sometimes mocking, but never like this. Never so empty. Never as if the one being who had given Max this path had already accepted that this was where it ended.

And those words began to leave cracks on Max’s willpower, deeper than the ones spreading across his scales.

The Arbiter watched calmly, as if Max’s fate had already been written long before this moment.

His hand moved with slow, precise motions, fingers drifting through the air as if he was not fighting Max at all, but simply correcting something that had gone out of place. The black mist that belonged to Max began to spread deeper inside his body against his will, crawling through his veins, wrapping around his bones, sinking into places it had never touched before.

It was his power.

And yet, for the first time, it no longer felt like it belonged to him.

It moved with the motions of Aurelian’s fingers, twisting and tightening inside Max as if those calm gestures were enough to command the very darkness sleeping beneath his skin.

Max’s heart shivered beyond his control.

For one terrifying breath, it felt as if something had reached through his chest and wrapped its fingers around it, slowly pulling it away from him while leaving his body alive enough to feel every second of it.

"The power of the system cannot belong to a mortal..." the Arbiter said.

His words were slow, calm, and merciless, digging into Max’s mind like a trapped rat clawing desperately through burning walls, searching for any way out before the heat swallowed it whole.

It was painful.

Unimaginably painful.

Every breath felt as if his lungs were being crushed inside his chest, and every vein beneath his skin burned as the black mist was forced deeper through him against his will. But Max endured it. Unlike the system creator, unlike that ancient voice already sinking into despair, he had not given up on his life.

His dark eyes were still shining, burning with a fire that had no light, only stubborn refusal.

They held a fire so fierce, so stubborn, that even the Arbiter paused for a moment, as if he had not expected a mortal trapped inside his judgment to still glare back at him like that.

Agnia’s rage began to burn brighter as well.

Blue flames danced across her skin, first faint, then stronger, curling over her arms and shoulders as her trembling body forced itself to move. She looked less like a wounded woman now and more like a lioness pushed into a corner, injured, bleeding, but still prepared to tear apart anything that reached for her mate.

That aura did not scare her.

The golden circle, the pressure, the Arbiter, the light that seemed able to judge even the darkness itself, none of it mattered in that moment. She did not care if she died right now. If there was no Max, then what was the point of giving birth to the child? What was the point of all this pain, all this unification of the dragon clans into one great kingdom, all this future they had only just begun to build?

She could not let him die. Her pride would not allow it. Her blood would not allow it. And more than anything, her heart could not bear to watch Max suffer while she remained standing there, doing nothing.

A gaze fell on her, cold enough to freeze even her burning feet in place.

But the flame burning in Agnia’s heart was hotter than her fear of the Arbiter.

Her body changed in an instant, flesh and fire twisting together as she forced herself into her draconic-hybrid form. Scales spread across her skin like living armor, her claws lengthened, and her wings burst from her back with blue flames wrapping around them like a glove, spreading wider and wider until they became much larger than her real wings.

They burned the ground beneath her feet and the ceiling above her head, filling the broken room with a heat that carried all of Agnia’s rage, all of her fear, and all of her will to protect the man before her.

Her feet left the ground. In the next split second, she shot forward, her golden eyes slowly turning blue as the flames around her burned brighter.

"Let him go!" Agnia roared.